Tesla has delivered a blow to Nvidia’s plans to dominate the AI car industry by abandoning work in Nvidia chips and moving to develop its own.

To make matters worse for the Green Goblin, Tesla is developing its own chip using Nvidia’s rival’s AMD intellectual property and any chips will be made by GloFo.

On Wednesday Sanjay Jha, CEO of AMD spin-off GlobalFoundries, said at the company's technology conference in Santa Clara, California, that the company is working directly with Tesla.

Tesla's silicon project is bounding ahead under the leadership of longtime chip architect Jim Keller, the head of Autopilot hardware and software since the departure of Apple veteran Chris Lattner in June.

Apparently, Keller was not that much of a fan of Nvidia, although to be fair he worked for AMD twice.

Keller arrived at Apple in 2008 through its acquisition of Palo Alto Semiconductor and was the designer of Apple's A4 and A5 iPhone chips, among other things. More than 50 people are working on the initiative under Keller, the source said.

Nvidia’s stock sank slightly on the news. Investers are aware that Tesla is not Nvidia’s only car AI partner. Analysts insist that Nvidia chips will remain the engine behind Tesla’s AI systems, while AMD chips could be used for some specific jobs.

We are not sure how true that will be, as there appears to be a trend happening here and it is following Apple's own chip development plans. Tesla wants its own chip and will use AMD technology to build it. If it builds it, why would it need Nvidia?

After a few months of trying to butter up Donald (Prince of Orange) Trump, Intel has decided to cut its losses.

Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich is one of three high-profile execs to walk away from Donald Trump’s business advisory panel.

“I resigned to call attention to the serious harm our divided political climate is causing to critical issues, including the serious need to address the decline of American manufacturing,” Krzanich said.

“Politics and political agendas have sidelined the important mission of rebuilding America’s manufacturing base … I resigned because I want to make progress, while many in Washington seem more concerned with attacking anyone who disagrees with them.”

The move follows Trump’s failure to immediately denounce white supremacists over a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one dead and several others injured.

Trump refused to condemn white supremacists, choosing instead to denounce violence “on all sides.” The president did not explicitly single out white supremacists until Monday, declaring in a speech that “racism is evil”.

However then he went on to share a tweet from the pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, who is known for promoting discredited theories about the killing of the Democratic National Committee employee, Seth Rich, and the “pizzagate” allegations against Hillary Clinton that led a man to walk into a restaurant with an assault rifle and fire off three rounds, among other falsehoods.

Other tech bosses to leave Trump’s industry panel include Disney chairman Bob Iger and Tesla chief executive Elon Musk. Both resigned in June after the president announced he would withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement. Uber’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, was the first tech executive to quit the council

Trump announced the creation of his Strategic and Policy Forum last December. The aim was to create a forum for business leaders to advise the president on ways to “make it attractive for firms to create new jobs”.

But the business panel was dogged by controversy from the outset, with staff and customers of many of the companies represented protesting that the involvement of their bosses appeared to endorse policies that their companies opposed.

The car maker Tesla might be finding itself in hot water after installing a camera inside the car to monitor the driver.

The camera is currently deactivated, and Tesla fans think it might be for attention monitoring during autonomous or semi-autonomous driving, but Tesla is not saying anything. Its discovery comes amid growing discussion in the auto industry as to how drivers and increasingly capable self-driving systems should divide the workload.

The camera is in the Model 3 which the automaker delivered last week. The camera is integrated up above the rear-view mirror in the pod which contains some of the front-facing cameras Tesla uses for its Autopilot system. The company confirmed it was a camera which covers the whole cabin and its occupants.

Elektrek speculates that it could be activated as part of Tesla’s upcoming Tesla Network, where owners of the electric cars will be able to dispatch them out as autonomous taxis when they’re not needed. Being able to review what happened in the case of an accident or when damage occurs, for instance, might be essential for putting owners’ minds at risk since, unlike with Uber or Lyft, they won’t be present in the vehicle themselves.

Another possibility is that the camera will be instrumental in managing attention during semi-autonomous and fully autonomous driving. Currently, most driver assistance systems rely on periodic contact or torque on the steering wheel in order to reassure the car that the driver is still aware of what’s going on around them.

Managing attention has long been a point of concern for automotive regulators, but cars that are smarter about taking on the more mundane stretches of road have accelerated those worries. Back in 2016, NHTSA research suggested the magic bullet on nudging drivers to stay involved still hadn’t been found, and warned that “operators may have somewhat calibrated their trust to the capabilities of the automation” only to come in for a surprise later on when the reality didn’t live up to their expectations.

Of course Tesla would not be spying on users to monitor the car's use for marketing purposes would it?

After talking about the new Volta GPU at the GPU Technology Conference earlier last month, Nvidia has now officially unveiled the PCIe-based Tesla V100 GPU accelerator, based on the GV100 GPU and offering 14 TFLOPs of single-precision compute performance.

In case you missed it earlier, the GV100 GPU is made on TSMC's new 12nm FinFET manufacturing process and packs 21 billion transistors on 815mm2 silicon. The GPU packs 5120 CUDA cores with 640 new Tensor Cores, offering 112 TFLOPs of Tensor performance - meant for deep learning - and it comes with 6MB of L2 cache, 16GB of HBM2 memory on a 4096-bit memory interface.

Due to a lower 250W TDP, mostly due to lower GPU clocks, compared to the SXM2 version of the Tesla V100 accelerator, the PCIe version of the Tesla V100 offers slightly lower compute and Tensor performance but it is still a massive improvement over the earlier available Tesla P100 PCIe accelerator which offered 9.3 TFLOPs of single-precision compute performance.

The PCIe version of the Tesla V100 retains passive cooling, which was a standard for all Tesla accelerators, including the upcoming SXM2 form-factor Tesla V100 and earlier available Tesla P100 in both PCIe and SXM2 form-factor.

According to Nvidia, the PCIe Tesla V100 accelerator should be available later this year and usual suspects, like HP, are likely to offer systems based on the Nvidia V100 accelerator.

Fudzilla has already mentioned Jim Keller, the hardware engineer that was one of the key people for finishing what was considered to be the overambitious AMD Zen CPU project. Keller now works for Tesla, and our well-informed friends confirmed that he is building a self-driving platform for the company.

Keller was hired to lead hardware engineering at Tesla. In other words, Keller is building self-driving Tesla platforms from scratch. We asked around if such a massive project would even be possible, but our sources are very confident that Keller can pull it off.

Keller and his team managed to launch Zen, a CPU architecture that had 52 percent higher instructions per clock compared to the previous generation. In the semiconductor world, this is more than a miracle, as people didn’t think that a promised 40 percent IPC was possible, let alone the 52 percent which was delivered. Even if you forget about this metric, the fact that AMD has a competing solution to the current Intel offering is some sort of mirracle no one thought possible, just a few months ago.

Tesla wont be driving Keller's self driving platform anytime soon. Don’t be naïve, these things don’t happen overnight, and it will be years until it's ready, and until then Elon has Mobile Eye for legacy cars and Nvidia Tegra PX2 for current Tesla S, X and III cards, Nvidia will get into the future cars too, as long as Elon is not finished with its own self-driving platform.

Elon Musk has confirmed that Mobile Eye is out of Tesla following the fatal crash. Not long after Mobile Eye was acquired by none other than Intel for a whooping $15 billion. We don’t think that the price is right, but Intel made a great move by acquiring something that it desperately needed for its own self-driving future. Intel has BMW as a customer, and that is a big catch.

This does mean that Nvidia will be out of Tesla at some point, as Tesla finishes up its own platform. This is not necessarily bad news for Nvidia, as Tesla will need a lot of time for in-house, self driving completion. Nvidia Drive PX 2 will get into many Tesla cars and probably even the Tegra, based on the new Volta architecture too.

Nvidia, Intel and Qualcomm - the three potentially big players in automotive - will have a dozen other car manufactures as potential customers. Developing a self-driving platform needs the expertise and money that most car manufacturers won’t spend.

The Apple of the car industry, Tesla, has a novel way of dealing with people who complain about sexual harassment and being paid less than males – it fires them.

AJ Vandermeyden, went public with her discrimination lawsuit against Tesla in February and now it seems that Tesla has decided to prove what a balanced employer it is by firing her.

Vandermeyden had claimed she was taunted and catcalled by male employees and that Tesla failed to address her complaints about the harassment, unequal pay and discrimination.

"It's shocking in this day and age that this is still a fight we have to have," she said at the time.

Tesla said that it had thoroughly investigated the employee's allegations with the help of "a neutral, third-party expert" and concluded her complaints were unmerited. So it didn’t have to reform its operations.

"Despite repeatedly receiving special treatment at the expense of others, Vandermeyden nonetheless chose to pursue a miscarriage of justice by suing Tesla and falsely attacking our company in the press," a Tesla spokesperson said.

"After we carefully considered the facts on multiple occasions and were absolutely convinced that Vandermeyden's claims were illegitimate, we had no choice but to end her employment at Tesla."

What was unusual about this case was that Vandermeyden stayed put after going public on her treatment. The normal procedure is to claim constructive dismissal and leave straight away.

However, by firing her, Tesla has created a bit of a PR storm for itself and been forced to defend its actions. From Vandermeyden’s perspective she becomes a victim of being a whistleblower of harassment at a company which is proud of its progressive reputation.

Tesla better hope that a court agrees with its “neutral, third-party expert" and that its investigation is not really a whitewash.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, announced on Twitter that the company plans to unveil its first electric semi-truck in September.

Musk revealed that he is impressed with an amazing job the team has done and while no further details have been given, earlier rumors and hints from the company suggested that such vehicle is coming and could use some of the autonomous-driving features seen in Tesla cars.

Tesla Semi truck unveil set for September. Team has done an amazing job. Seriously next level.

Previously, Musk stated that heavy-duty trucks and similar vehicles running on electric power have are needed and this could potentially be a huge market for the company. The noted that Tesla Semi, as it was referred then, will deliver a substantial reduction in the cost of transport while increasing safety.

Unfortunately, Musk did not reveal any further details so we do not know when it will be actually available or what kind of price is expected.

Plenty of other automotive companies are working on a similar vehicle, including Nikola Motor's Nikola One prototype, with hydrogen fuel cell batteries and natural gas range extender technology, Mercedes-Benz Urban eTruck, Mack's zero-emission drayage truck and others.

Tesla Inc stock rose by $7.16 or 2.41 percent and closed at $304.00 but the newest announcement could push it even further.

Tesla has announced that it is raising $1.2 billion to fuel its coming Model 3, an all-electric, entry-level sedan that is set to enter mass production later in July.

The company said in SEC filings last Friday that it raised about $350 million via stock sales and brought in an additional $850 million in convertible debt. In addition, the company said that stock offerings include $250 million of common stock and $750 million in convertible senior notes due in five years – in concurrent underwritten registered public offerings.

Underwriters will be given a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 15 percent of each offering, with CEO Elon Musk participating by purchasing $25 million of common stock. The funds will be used to strengthen its balance sheets and “reduce any risks associated with the rapid scaling of its business due to the launch of the Model 3,” as well as for general corporate purposes.

Tesla’s five-seater Model 3 electric sedan accelerates as fast as some of the best-selling “junior executive” luxury sports sedans in the United States, including the Audi A3/S3 and the BMW 2 series. In early prototype runs, Musk said the base Model 3 can do 0 to 60mph in under 6 seconds, or roughly on par with current Audi A3 or BMW 228i models. A later release with a dual-motor option arriving next year is expected to perform in an even slimmer acceleration timeframe, while a right-hand drive option is scheduled to appear sometime next summer.

The state of New York has already begun releasing details of a new EV incentive plan that allows owners of the Chevy Bolt and upcoming Tesla Model 3 to take advantage of a full $2,000 rebate program beginning April 1st. The vehicle requirements to receive the full rebate include an MSRP of less than $60,000 and a range of over 120 miles. The second requirement will strategically eliminate owners of the Nissan Leaf, BMW i3 or Ford Focus Electric from qualifying for the rebates, though these models will still receive a $1,700 rebate despite falling short on range requirements.

The upcoming Model 3 launch later this year is expected to bring the potential base price down to $25,500 in the state of New York after federal tax incentives. The company added the Model 3 to appeal to consumers that are not able to afford its six-figure Model S and Model X sedans, which do not qualify under the range requirement.

In addition, Tesla is in the process of building out a billion-dollar Gigafactory battery plant in Nevada approximately 455,225 square meters (4.9 million square feet) that will house facilities used in the manufacture of its PowerPack 3 and PowerWall 2 battery units, along with battery packs for Model 3 vehicles. The Nevada plant is expected to bring in another $350 million to the state and at least 550 more jobs to the region. On its own, Gigafactory 1 is expected to employ roughly 6,500 people by 2022. This type of job generation and investment is creating healthy competition among European nations that are eager to be part of Tesla’s Gigafactory 2 endeavors.

Back in December, Dutch Economy Minister Henk Kamp announced to parliament that the government would strive to convince Tesla to build its second Gigafactory operation in the Netherlands to “strengthen the automotive sector in Noord-Brabant and other regions” of the country. While the current regional office is located in Amsterdam, Musk has stated that in the long term, “there is no question” that Europe will receive at least two or three battery factory locations as investment begins to shape and supply begins to ramp up for more factory production.

The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX took to Twitter over the weekend to tease us about what to expect on the pending production version of the mass market, all-electric Model 3 sedan that has audiences cautiously waiting in anticipation.

The Tesla Model 3 is the world’s first mass-market electric vehicle offered at a base price of $35,000 (€32,194) and will include a range of at least 215 miles, fully standard Autopilot, a larger optional battery and optional all-wheel drive.

In October 2016, Chevrolet debuted a similar vehicle called the Chevy Bolt, complete with a 238 mile range and $36,620.99 base price. While it does not come with standard Autopilot, both Tesla’s and Chevy’s latest mid-range electric vehicles are able to run from zero to 60mph in under six seconds and under seven seconds, respectively.

In Musk’s own words, the Model 3 is essentially a “smaller, more affordable version of Model S with less range, power, and fewer features”.

Battery capacity limited to 75kWh

First and foremost on the list of new details is that the Model 3’s battery life will be limited to 75kWh due to the vehicle’s shorter wheelbase. The distance between the front and rear axles of the mid-size vehicle is an estimated 113 inches, while the Model S and Model X are 116.5 inches and 116.7 inches, respectively.

Although the original Model 3 announcements claimed that the vehicle would have “at least 215 miles” of range, Musk said that the vehicle is expected to have more range than the 238 mile Chevy Bolt. When accompanied with larger battery options, the range will obviously exceed this and become more in-line with the company’s higher-priced vehicle options.

Employees to receive first Model 3 units for “beta testing”

Chevy has already beaten Tesla to the market by at least a year, as the first Model 3 production vehicles aren’t scheduled to be delivered to consumers until late 2017. But in terms of who gets first dibs on the initial production run of vehicles, the company says it will first sell a limited run of cars to employees, who will act as beta testers in the interests of getting the vehicle released to the general public even sooner.

The news is similar to Ford’s announcement last September that it would begin an employee only autonomous driving service to beta test the quality of its driverless vehicles on a short stretch of public roads in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford’s path to production is more long-term, however, as it intends to make the employee only autonomous service a middle step before its public implementation in 2021.

Dual motor option, all-wheel-drive arriving next year

Perhaps one of the more puzzling announcements surrounding Tesla’s mid-size sedan is the confirmation from Musk that the all-wheel-drive option will not be released during launch, but will come as a later configuration sometime next year, several months down the road. The reason for this is because the company wants to “minimize configuration complexity” to keep the production ramp on schedule.

Source: Twitter

For Tesla, operational success is all about balancing the supply with timing, and if it can generate 375,000 pre-orders for a future vehicle, then it will need to focus all of its production efforts on fulfilling those orders on the release scheduled before the end of the year.

As some reports have previously mentioned, Tesla is not a company that has always followed its production deadlines. The Model X was delayed by three years and still had with quality control issues. Over the past five years, the company has failed to meet 20 of Musk’s projections and has currently missed about 10 goals by nearly a year on average.

Right-hand drive next summer, Performance option a year from now

Two of Musk’s more notable details when discussing Model 3 characteristics on Twitter were the implementation of a right-hand drive model for British, South African, Indian, East Asian, Australian and Japanese customers, and the possibility of Performance models after the initial release. When the first Model S vehicles were released just over four years ago, they all featured rear-wheel drive and standard left-hand drive. The right-hand option was released two years later in 2014, though Tesla says the wait will only be until next summer for the Model 3.

Source: Twitter

For Performance editions of the Model 3, Musk claimed these should arrive in about “a year from now” as the company works to fulfill its initial production volumes to pre-order customers and early adopters between Q4 2017 and summer of 2018. As for acceleration, the Model S is still expected to win due to having more space for a larger battery. While this is no news, the Model 3 is at least confirmed to be competitive with the latest BMW 3 series and Audi A4, while the Model S is “more like the BMW 5 and 6 series, but much faster, more storage space and [includes] Autopilot features,” Musk reiterated.

The Model 3 has arguably become the biggest release for electric vehicles over the next several quarters. But whether Tesla’s Fremont factory can handle production demand has yet to be seen. As we wrote last month, the company has been re-engineering and expanding its operations at its Fremont factory, where it is currently installing manufacturing equipment. At Gigafactory 1 near Sparks, Nevada, it has begun production of battery cells for energy storage products which coincidentally have the same form-factor as the cells that will be used in the Model 3.

Musk mentioned that he is asking suppliers for enough componentry to produce 1,000 cars per week in July, followed by 2,000 per week in August and 4,000 per week in September. By the end of the year, production rate is expected to be around 5,000 per week, or about five times the current production rate of the Model S and Model X. With a hopeful but unlikely absence of no supply constraints of any sort, this production target is set to double by the end of 2018.

Yesterday Tesla said that its mass market Model 3 sedan is now expected to start limited volume production in June and will reach volume production by September. The $35,000 vehicle is a major step for a company moving from being a small niche manufacturer to a mass market electric vehicle manufacturer.

The company’s update on Model 3 production was given as it posted a wider-than expected fourth quarter loss for 2016, though its sales turned out a bit higher than expected. Revenue for the quarter was $2.28 billion, up from $1.21 billion the previous year, while the company lost 69 cents per share on a non-GAAP earnings results.

Initial crash test results have been “positive”

“Ahead of the Model 3 launch, we are re-engineering and expanding our operations as we anticipate the needs of a much larger family of Tesla owners,” the company stated in a letter to investors.

The first Model 3 prototypes were built this month as part of an assessment on the overall manufacturing process. The company said in its earnings report that initial crash test results for Model 3 prototypes were “positive”, leading it to be positive about the planned July production target.

“Installation of Model 3 manufacturing equipment is underway in Fremont and at Gigafactory 1, where in January, we began production of battery cells for energy storage products, which have the same form-factor as the cells that will be used in Model 3.”

Once production begins to grow in September, the company expects to begin selling around 5,000 vehicles per week in the fourth quarter. Volume deliveries are expected to begin in the second half of 2018, when production is expected to reach around 10,000 vehicles per week.

The production schedule comes on the heels of Tesla CFO Jason Wheeler announcing his departure from the company to pursue business in the public policy, while previous CFO Deepak Ahuja returns to fill the gap.

Tesla expands mobile repair service, Supercharger network

The company has also announced that it will expand its mobile repair service to allow its customers to make on-the-spot vehicle repairs at home or at the office. The intention here is that around 80 percent of Tesla repairs are minor enough to be done remotely via the vehicle’s Internet-connected dash module, so there is no need to bring the vehicle’s into a servicing center for these situations.

Back in December, the company revealed dramatic to expand its Tesla Supercharger network as it had previously fallen behind on building out a network of DC fast-charging stations in some areas. The new plan for 2017 is to double the number of Supercharger stations in North America, from 373 to nearly 800, which will match its current global network of 805 stations worldwide (5,159 chargers). The chargers are currently capable of resupplying 170 miles of range in about 30 minutes for most models, outpacing the speed of many conventional chargers that deliver 30 miles of range per hour.